Galina Ulanova Galina Sergeyevna Ulánova has the reputation of the greatest Soviet ballerina. Her flat in Moscow is designated a national museum, and there are monuments to her in Saint Petersburg and Stockholm. Ulanova studied in Petrograd under Agrippina Vaganova and her own mother, a ballerina of the Imperial Russian Ballet. She joined the Mariinsky Theatre in 1928. They say that Konstantin Stanislavsky, fascinated with her acting style, implored her to take part in his stage productions. In 1944, when her fame reached Stalin, he had her transferred to the Bolshoi Theatre, where she would be the prima ballerina assoluta for 16 years. The following year, she danced the title role in the world premiere of Sergei Prokofiev's Cinderella.
Ulanova was a great actress as well as dancer, and when she was finally allowed to tour abroad at the age of 46, enraptured British papers wrote that "Galina Ulanova in London knew the greatest triumph of any individual dancer since Anna Pavlova". Having retired from the stage at the age of 50, she coached many generations of the Russian dancers. She was awarded with Lenin or Stalin Prizes in 1941, 1946, 1947, 1950, and 1957.
